Fun Facts About Your Body

Sometimes, we get so focused on diseases, defects or what to do when your body starts doing things wrong that it’s easy to forget just how interesting – and downright amazing – our bodies can be when they’re working correctly. Today we’re going to take some time and explore some facts that make you, and your body, incredible.

Your skin is your largest organ: When people think of organs, you tend to immediately think of internal things like lungs and intestines. The definition of an organ, however, is a collection of tissues joined in a structural unit to serve a common function. Your skin may not be internal, but it’s certainly an organ.

You blush on the inside: When you blush, it’s because blood rushes to the skin of your face. Interestingly, it also rushes to the lining of your stomach. That means when you blush, so does your tummy.

Your brain can see UV light: The lens of the eye typically filters this light out. However, some people who have had surgeries that remove or alter the lens of the eye have reported the ability to detect ultraviolet light.

You’re stronger than you think you are: We’ve all heard stories about people being able to do incredible and heroic things in moments of extreme stress, like lifting a car off of a child. Your muscles are actually incredibly strong, but are self-limiting so as not to damage tendons and ligaments. When you have a rush of adrenaline, those limitations are “turned off” in some people.

You’re incredibly hairy: Humans have just as much hair as our chimp cousins do. Most of the hair on a human is fine and nearly invisible. Some scientists believe we are slowly evolving to lose this hair completely as it doesn’t really help keep us warm or protected anymore.

You glow in the dark: Humans are very faintly bioluminescent. Unfortunately, the light we give off is about one thousand times weaker than your eye can see. Other animals can spot us pretty easily, though.

Your eyes are sensitive: Just because we can’t see what is happening in fact #6 doesn’t mean your eyes are weak. In fact, your eyes are so sensitive that if you found someplace flat, you could see the light from one candle about 30 miles away. We’re just surrounded by so much light all the time that you rarely get the chance to test your eyes sensitivity.

Some people really can “see the music”: The entertainment industry loves using the “aging hippie” character to say things like “I can see the music” or “taste the colors, man” etc. in order to establish them as drug users. Some people, however, really can do those things. A condition called Synesthesia can cause your senses to combine and overlap.

You’re mostly not you: As far as biomass is concerned, most of the cells in your body aren’t human cells. We’re predominantly made up of fungi and bacteria.

You have way more than five senses: Like most things you learned in your early education, the list of senses most of us were taught as kids is a very simplified version. Most experts but the list closer to 15-20 senses. This include a sense of balance, time, temperature and proprioception (the location of your limbs in relation to one another).